A Rare Grace
by chaleur
Summary: If you don't know something, you can always learn. It might take a while, but you'll get it eventually.


The Se7en Days of Christmas  
Day 1 - Slam Dunk  
Pairing: RuHana  
  
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A Rare Grace  
by Alexandra Lucas  
kohlcrimson@hotmail.com  
  
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He enjoys watching him practice. The energy he put into  
it, and the pureness of the concentration evident on his  
face reminds him of a child in a playground, as though  
what he was doing was, at that moment, the most   
important thing in the world to him.   
  
Sakuragi, he reflects, just never gives up. The days are  
cooling, getting shorter and more bleak, the trees   
shedding leaves almost the colour of his hair, in shades  
of brown and yellow and orange and the occasional   
brilliance of red, just variations of a theme. But he  
still comes everyday to practice, more constant than the  
changing of the seasons.  
  
He's practicing his jump shots now, moving further and  
further from the hoop as he goes, and he's sworn that  
he'll complete five hundred shots by himself.   
  
Rukawa doesn't remember how long it took him to get it  
right nine times out of ten, then as close to perfect  
as he could get. It is a brutal process, he knows,  
the training of muscle and skin and bone to so fine an  
edge of control to sink shot after shot after shot. He  
has hazy impressions of afternoons stretching into  
evenings outside the court, and shooting hoops until  
his feet went numb and his arms ached. The tips of  
his fingers could still feel the even roughness of  
the ball even though he was no longer holding it, and  
only then did he stop. Stumbling home with his eyes   
half-closed, dunking his head under the tepid spray  
of the shower and falling into bed with the towel  
still wrapped around his hips.  
  
He doubts that it will take Sakuragi very long. Already  
he jumps, arms stretched out towards the hoop, the  
easy flick of a wrist and the balls sails easily   
through.  
  
Privately, he doesn't think that Sakuragi is learning  
about jump shots at all. Pleasantly buzzed from the  
endorphins after his own training, he allows himself a  
rare moment of whimsy and really looks at the shift  
of muscle under skin, the small jump and the   
infinitesimal pause in the air, the leisurely flick,  
and he thinks that Sakuragi is learning about grace.  
  
On the court, in a game, he charges forward. He is  
rarely still, his very feet are kinetically charged,  
and he is unstoppable. Sakuragi is basketball's  
firecracker, all explosive red energy and noise,   
standing out from all the other players. He was   
boundless, untamed, unpredictable energy, and dangerous  
because of it.  
  
But he was not really /graceful/.   
  
Mitsui is. So is Ryota, but it is in Mitsui that  
you truly see it. He is restrained power; the three-  
pointers that he scores are seemingly effortless,   
almost as natural as breathing. It comes naturally to  
him. His shots look almost gentle, the lightest push  
of his fingers, the single, perfect moment in time  
when it is all perfect and he knows it will go in, and  
his body relaxes in mid-air as though it is where he  
has always belonged, like coming home, and all he  
needs to do it push the ball. He once saw Anzai-sensei  
demonstrating shots to Sakuragi, and even he had had it,  
the graceful relaxation like the movements of a cat,  
unexpected, yet undeniably there in that rotund body,   
hidden in the folds of skin.  
  
It is one of the few kinds of grace that Rukawa can  
appreciate. It is one that he understands.  
  
On the court, Sakuragi bends, jumps, shoots.  
  
Sakuragi has a wild, elusive beauty in his body, in the   
strength of his legs and the long, muscled reach of his   
arms. Rukawa knows, with the lazy, possessive langour of  
a tactile memory, that skin only a few shades darker   
than his own bruises easily, but heals faster than his  
own. He has a player's musculature, lean and corded  
around his limbs, and surprisingly slim hips. He knows  
that his lips will soften and open after the initial  
hitch of breath that reveals that Sakuragi is still  
surprised every time he kisses him.  
  
It is getting colder, and the sky is darkening to   
purple; soon it will be too dark to play anymore.   
  
He saw grace only in terms of flesh, muscle and skin  
and bone, in the flex of an arm, the line of a wrist  
and the bend of a waist just before a jump. It has been  
a very long time since he had seen grace in anything  
not remotely connected to the game.  
  
Bend. Jump. Shoot.  
  
But he can learn.  
  
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End file.
